Psalms: Giving Us Voice By Rebecca Cotton

Help, it’s an invasion! 

Just kidding, but it is your youth minister who got a special invite to write the blog post for today. Three cheers for youth! 

During Lent, our youth group is going through a series called Outside the Lines: An Artistic Exploration of Faith. The purpose of this series is to expose our young people to some of the ways they can have conversations with God and build a relationship with Him. 

The Race Is On . . . 

 In the first youth group of this Lenten series, we took a mad dash though the psalms to figure out what people have been talking to God about in the millennia before we came around. Some of the psalms were exactly what we expected: they gave praise and thanksgiving to God and identified him as a source of comfort and hope. There were also psalms where the author was clearly suffering, but still had great trust and faith in God. Psalm 42:11 is a great example of this:  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. 

First signs of Spring bring hope after Winter

But then we came to Psalm 88 and were rather startled. Psalm 88 is not a happy psalm. It does not give praise or thanksgiving to God. It is the cry of someone who is hurting, furiously angry at God, and feeling utterly rejected by Him. I’m standing my ground, God, shouting for help, at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak. Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear? Why do you make yourself scarce? For as long as I remember I’ve been hurting; I’ve taken the worst you can hand out, and I’ve had it. Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life; I’m bleeding, black-and-blue. You’ve attacked me fiercely from every side, raining down blows till I’m nearly dead. You made lover and neighbor alike dump me; the only friend I have left is Darkness. 
(The Message, Psalm 88:13-18) 


Window of burned chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary
Looking at all the voices in the psalms leads us to a very important observation about strong relationships with God: regardless of our feelings or circumstances, the correct response is ALWAYS to come to God and tell Him about it. Sometimes this will look like praise and thanksgiving, and sometimes it will look like us screaming in fury at Him. God doesn’t want a relationship with the sanitized version of ourselves. He wants us to come, in joy and in suffering, when we give thanks to Him and when we’re just angry, through whatever avenue we can communicate to Him. 

 Conversation starters: 

  • What are different ways you like to communicate with God? 
  • Have you ever prayed to God when you were upset or angry? What was that like? 
  • Is there anything you would be uncomfortable talking to God about? 
  • If you were to tell God how you are doing right now, with complete honesty, what would you say?



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